Character Creation

Character Creation
By Timothy J. Lanza
Using Middleground Gaming System v2.0
Based on Hahn's Middleground IRC RPG System

Section 1: The All-Important Concept

The first step in creating a character is to develop a strong, original concept. Are you going to play a noble & just warrior, a crafty treasure hunter, or an intelligent & studious wizard? You need to think about this for a while if you want a good pl aying experience later. Try to come up with something interesting, unique, and non-stereotypical.

Respond with a complete description including these five aspects of your character. Think about this well; don't just search for a quick answer. The more this character reflects your personal thought, the more fun you will have when playing.

Occupation/Profession
Appearance/Mannerisms
Personality/Demeanor
Motivations/Goals
Background/Hometown

Once you have that written down in words, think it over, and think you could confidently play this person and *enjoy* it, you can move down to the second section.

Section 2: Stats, Skills, 'n Stuff

Flame me if you will, but I'm gonna stress this again: Don't do this part until you've done Section 1 completely and thoroughly. Doing Section 2 will be a lot easier and more enjoyable if you have a strong concept for these stats to reflect.

First, allocate your six attributes. This is very important, as it will decide your starting statistics, and how quickly your statistics increase as your character achieves experience levels. There are six attributes to think about.

Note: For those of you who have experience with the math bedhind the character creation system, I have made some changes. There are two reasons for this.
1. To discourage horribly unbalanced, and hence generally unplayable, characters.
2. To allow specialized characters without having them absolutely handicapped in every other area.

Muscle - Your character's physical strength and muscle mass. A character with Muscle 1 has trouble walking when there's a light breeze and a character with Muscle 30 bench presses cattle and eats gravel for breakfast.Basically, your ability to hurt people and break things.
Affects: Hit Points, Attack Power
Stamina - Your character's health, fortitude, endurance, and vigor. Characters with Stamina 1 faint at the mention of discomfort and someone who has Stamina 30's response to having a beluga whale dropped on him is to get up, dust himself off , and try not to be late to wherever he was going. Basically, one's ability to take a licking and keep on ticking.
Affects: Hit Points, Defense Power, Magic Endurance
Intelligence - Your character's intellect, perceptiveness, and capacity to learn new things. Someone with Intelligence 1 never got the hang of the whole 'ability to suckle' thing and someone with Intelligence 30 tries to master at least 2 ne w foreign languages on his lunch hour.
Affects: Wisdom, Reaction
Talent - A character's affinity for special skills and abilities. Someone with Talent 1 is capable of walking forward, stopping, and breathing. A character with Talent 30 can juggle flaming pumas while clog dancing and reciting all the episo de titles from Star Trek (in chronological order, of course). It affects MP, Wisdom, and Magic Endurance. Higher Talent basically makes your special skills and magicks more effective.
Affects: Magic Points, Wisdom, Magic Endurance
Dexterity - Your character's hand-eye coordination, and ability to do crafty, applied tasks with his hands. Someone with Dexterity 1 should not operate chain saws and may have trouble patting his head and rubbing his belly in the same day. A person with Dexterity 30 can repair a watch with his right hand while writing in Greek with his left hand, blindfolded. It affects your Attack Power, Hit & Dodge Rate, and Reaction, making your attacks hit more often and increasing the chance of t he treasured Critical Hit.
Affects: Attack Power, Hit Rate, Dodge Rate, Reaction
Agility - Your character's wits, reactions, and reflexes. Someone with Agility 1 will hide under a table 3 hours after someone yells 'Duck!' while someone with Agility 30 sidesteps attacks before the assailant even knew he wanted to make the m. It affects your Defense Power, Hit & Dodge Rates, and Reaction, making your battle actions quicker and enemy attacks less accurate.
Affects: Defense Power, Hit Rate, Dodge Rate, Reaction

You have 90 points to distribute between these six attributes. You must spend at least 1 point on each attribute, and cannot have an attribute over 30. So, if you wanted all attributes to be equal, they would each be 15. BTW that would make for a very boring character.

After deciding your attributes' values, you must decide the orientation of your character between combat, skilled, and rounded. Choose one from the table below. There will be one, and only one "REALLY Combat Oriented Character":

REALLY Combat Oriented Character (i.e. Kyle)
Base # of Attacks: 2+1
Weapons/Armor: Best (But possibly very specialized.)
Number Of Skill Groups: 1
Combat Oriented Character (i.e. Hiro)
Base # of Attacks: 2
Weapons/Armor: Best (Based on concept.)
Number Of Skill Groups: 2
Rounded Character (i.e. Ronfar)
Base # of Attacks: 1
Weapons/Armor: Good (Again, depends on concept.)
Number Of Skill Groups: 3
Skill Oriented Character (i.e. Lemina)
Base # of Attacks: 1
Weapons/Armor: Poor (Wands, butter knives, bathrobes)
No. Of Skill Groups: 4

Section 3: Magic and Mayhem

Once you have attributes AND your character orientation, you must choose some skill groups that reflect your character's special abilities, talents, or training. You may choose as many as your character orientation allows.

Below is a list of skill groups that are most common in my version of Lunar and that I have devised a system for. If you have an idea for a skill group that you want your character to have, by all means, submit it with your character and I'll do my bes t to use it.

Elemental Magicks - These are you general face-stomping combat spells, like Lemina's Ice and Fire.
Variant Elemental Magicks - Similar to the Elemental Magicks, but different effect maps.
Litanies - These magicks affect the characteristics, status, and hit points of characters.
Weapon Magicks - Spells associated with a certain weapon or group of weapons, like Hiro's Blade magic. Like the other characters, you do not need to have a Weapon Magic to use a particular type weapon. These are just magicks centered on a weapon. If you have another idea, tell me and I will see what I can do.
Rare and "Exotic" Magicks - These types of spells are only found in the hands of great wizards and generals. They may only be taken with good background reasons as to why. No character may ever have more than one of these groups, nor will m ore than one character have the same one. Be aware that if you select one of these, I may have some plot twists just for you.

This list is short and by no means should be a restriction. You may browse it over when deciding your character's skills, but don't hesitate to send me ideas for new skills that would work better with your character than these. In fact, some of the on es that you see above were created with characters from this game and others in mind.

Once you've decided skills, you should be done! Email me a neat, tidy reply and I'll get back to you with a final draft character info sheet and instructions on when we'll play, etc.

Timothy J. Lanza, a.k.a. TrueBlue
trueblue@tiac.net
Gamemaster, Lunar: Stolen From Time